


and I will gladly pass it on to you

by DragonEyez



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Disjointed Story-Telling, Fake Marriage, Fero and Lem had a WEIRD original bond, Fluff, M/M, Real Relationship, Season: Autumn in Hieron, Secret Samol 2018, minor injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 22:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17569139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonEyez/pseuds/DragonEyez
Summary: Over the months as the three of them traveled together, Hella kept collecting bits and pieces of the story, but they were so scattered and told differently depending on whether it was was Fero or Lem doing the telling that she hard time piecing it all together. Neither was ever around to counteract the other’s story, but they both had enough physical evidence to support the basics too. But still, things weren’t adding up. And ordinarily it wouldn’t bother her, but now she wasinvested.





	and I will gladly pass it on to you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arpad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arpad/gifts).



> prompt: their initial bond is something like 'they have tasted eachothers blood', so a pre-cannon event that justifies that? might be fun to have it be a literal re-telling to Hella in bits and pieces over time, maybe having the story change a bit either between tellings or between lem and fero - consequently Hella thinks it's all bullshit because of that.
> 
> title is from [anything for you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvHeYawq0N8) by Ludo
> 
> i really hope you like the way i tried to play with the prompt!

“Look, we’re going to be on the boat for a while, whether you like it or not Fero, so find some way to pass the time.” Hella looked unhappy as she sat back in the crow’s nest. Or at least, Fero thought she did. She usually looked unhappy, so maybe she was just grumpier than usual? He didn’t know why, though, if anyone had the right to be upset at the situation, it was himself. She was the one who had _chosen_ to get on the dumb boat with all the dumb partiers. 

“Fine. I will.” He huffed, leaning back himself. Except, there wasn’t anything to do. He could go bother Lem, but he was charting their course and would probably just yell at Fero to leave him alone. And he _definitely_ didn’t want to go where all the people that Calhoun had brought on board were. He tapped his fingers on his thighs without much thought, but abandoned that in favor of fidgeting, but before long even _that_ was boring. “Ugh! This _sucks_.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I don’t-”

“‘-need to sleep,’ I _know_ but you _can_ I’ve seen you.”

“I’m not in the mooooooood.”

“How is that _my_ problem?”

“Well it’s _your_ fault I’m on this boat. I wanted to walk but _noooooo_.”

“Lem made the decision too, go bother him.”

“I already thought about that, but he wouldn’t be any fun right now. Oh!” He suddenly had an _idea_ and he bounced slightly in place.

“What now?”

“Remember when me and Lem were telling you about how we got to Velas?”

“Y...es?”

“Well Lem _totally_ got some stuff wrong like-”

“Wait wait wait, are you going to retell me the _entire_ story?”

“Psh nooooo.” Fero laced his fingers behind his head and settled into a more comfortable position. Or at least as comfortable as he could get against the scratchy wood. “Just the important stuff.”

“ _Great_.”

\---

“Fero, we’re going the wrong way!”

“We’re _totally_ not! I asked the squirrel back there and _he_ said-”

Lem threw his hands up in the air and stopped in the middle of the road, map carefully clutched in one hand. Fero didn’t know what his _problem_ was, he’d been doing a _very_ good job of actually making sure they were headed toward Velas while Lem was fiddling with his stupid map like it could tell them exactly where in the vast expanse of the mountain forest they were. At least _Fero_ could ask the local wildlife or fly up himself to see. 

“Fero, what would a _squirrel_ in the middle of nowhere know about where _Velas_ is?”

If he’d had feathers or fur at the moment, they’d’ve puffed up in offence for the squirrel. Also he was offended on behalf of himself. “What do _you_ know about getting to Velas? Huh? Can _you_ figure out where the hell we are?”

“I’ve got the map!”

“The map is _stupid_ , Lem!”

“It is _not_!”

Fero put his hands on his hips, leaning forward slightly. “Oh yeah? Where are we? If your map is so great, tell me where we are!” He waited as Lem looked at the map closely, glancing between their surroundings and the parchment. As time passed, his brow furrowed and he began muttering to himself, looking up every so often to scowl at Fero’s shit-eating grin. After minutes had passed, he folded his arms in a huff, not meeting Fero’s eyes.

“Fine! Maybe I don't know our exact location at this _exact_ moment, but I still maintain we’re going in the wrong direction, and I’m not going to continue on the word of some some bushy-tailed rodent as the sun is about to set!”

\---

“Wait wait.” Hella interrupted, earning her a glare from Fero.

“Look, you wanted to hear the story!”

“Yeah yeah I know, but there’s no way you 1) got Lem King to admit he was wrong about something, or 2) that he said ‘bushy-tailed rodent.’”

“Were you there?”

“...No. But when Lem was telling me this-”

“Look, if you weren’t there, then how would you know what he said? Lem’s a weird guy, he says weird things.”

“Still how’d you get him to saw he was _wrong_?”

“I mean he didn’t really and also hush! I’m tryin’ to tell a story here!”

Hella gestured for him to continue on and he settled back into his position. “Now, where was I?”

\---

“Are you going to keep standing there like doorknob or are you gonna come with me already?”

“A ‘ _doorknob_?”

“You’re a doorknob!”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re a doorknob!”

"You're just saying things now!"

“You know what it mean!”

“That’s just- That makes no sense! And anyways, no, I am not going to continue on! It’s nearly dark and I’m going to set up camp for the night. If we’re lost, I don’t want to make it worse in the dark, and if we’re going the right way, I’d rather we arrive in the day time.”

Lem was already heading into the forest, and for a moment, Fero considered continuing on without him. It would serve him right if Fero got the to right place and Lem got stranded out here forever, walking in circles with his stupid map and his stupid face and his stupid need to be right all the time. But he wasn’t cruel enough to leave Lem alone to meet a grizzly fate when a bear decided he looked like a tasty pre-hibernation snack or to starve to death in the woods while autumn drew to a close. Besides, how was he supposed to see the look on Lem’s face tomorrow when he realized he was wrong if he didn’t stick around to see it?

Annoyed, Fero turned into a blue jay and twittered at Lem as he flew overhead, looking for a proper campsite. _He_ didn’t need to sleep or eat, but Lem did, he supposed, so it would only be right to find him an actually decent place to sleep. Almost like he could read his mind, Lem looked up with a small smile. 

“I _do_ know how to find a proper campsite, you know. I’m a field Archivist, I’ve been doing this for years.”

Fero ignored him and dropped to the ground, turning into a fox for good measure.

“And now you’re just showing off!” Fero could hear the laugh in Lem’s voice, and paused, one front paw lifted in the air as if to say “And so what?”

Eventually they (Fero) found the perfect place and Fero curled up into himself, watching as Lem put up the tent and started the campfire, content to lay off to the side and let him do all the work. It wasn’t _his_ idea to start setting up camp this early. He fell asleep for a little bit, a cat nap more than anything, but when he smelled roasting meat, he woke lazily, making a show out of stretching out and yawning, snapping his teeth shut with an animalistic grin at Lem, who just rolled his eyes and offered out a hunk of what smelled like venison. 

“Do you want some of this or are you going to keep being dramatically tired?”

He considered being contrary, just for the sake of it, but instead, he trotted up and snatched the whole thing out of Lem’s hand. And...also more than that. 

“OH MY GODS I’M SO SORRY!” Fero was immediately was examining Lem’s now-bleeding thumb, trying to figure out how bad the wound was while Lem just kept yelling, “ _DID YOU REALLY JUST BITE ME FERO?_ ”

\---

“You _bit_ him?!” She sounded incredulous, and Fero was thankful for the low light so that she couldn’t see the embarrassed flush crawling up his face. 

“It was an _accident_!” He protested. 

“How do you accidentally bite someone hard enough to make them bleed?”

“I’m not a...great...judge...of space, sometimes.”

“You _bit_ him.”

Fero threw his head back against the hard wood of the crow’s nest. “Yes, I bit him. It’s been established, excellent work detective.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Well-”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by the sudden cry of “SHIP!” from below them, and Hella cursed, hastily standing and checking the horizon with her telescope. “Shit!”

“What? Who is it?”

Hella barely spared him a glance before basically sliding down the ladder to drop heavily to the deck. With a sigh, Fero followed. He _said_ they should’ve walked.

\---

“So what’s the deal with you and the little guy?”

“You mean Fero?” Lem didn’t look up from his book, choosing instead to continue scribbling notes in the margins, frowning and flipping back and forth between pages when he found something he didn’t like. Hella would ask if he planned on looking up from his book at all for either a conversation or during their entire time on the island, but decided that she really didn’t care.

“Yeah, I mean Le- I mean Fero. There’s only one ‘little guy’ on the boat.” Thankfully, he either didn’t notice or politely ignored the way she kept mixing up their names. 

“I mean there’s also Fantasmo but-”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yes yes. What did you want to know again? Sorry, I’m just a bit distracted at the moment, this text is fascinating and-”

“I mean,” Hella breathed in slowly, trying not to get to frustrated. He was a bookworm, he was a little spacey, it was fine. It was fine. “You two are close. What’s the story there?”

Lem closed the book and looked up at her, an odd gleam in his eye. “We’re blood bonded.”

“ _Blood bonded_?” She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. On Ordenna, blood bonds were serious business, a warrior’s pact you made with people you expected to die alongside. Lem and Fero were, well, _Lem and Fero_. Nice enough, maybe a little...squishy...but not the kind of people she’d ever assume were in a life pact that _serious_. It made her reevaluate her opinions of them just a little. 

“Yes. Do you know the term?”

“Yes, Lem, I know the term. What does have to do with you and Fero, though?”

“Well, we have one, I guess. That’s really all there is to it.”

She could have just left it at that, gone to see what Hadrian or Calhoun were doing, but she wanted to press him for answers. They still had _hours_ before they got to the island, and the story had to be a curious one. So she pulled over one of the barrels of what she assumed was either rum or provisions that hadn’t yet been transported below deck and sat next to Lem. It surprised him, she saw it in his face, but she didn’t really care. “There’s a story there, there always is with these things.”

“You...want to hear about it? It’s really not all that special?”

She flashed him a smile with just a _little_ too much teeth. “Humor me.” 

“Well...alright then.”

\---

They were just outside of Velas when Lem had a realization. “Say, Fero?”

Fero, who had been scurrying along ahead of him and running back when he got bored, turned around and came back, head cocked to one side in confusion. “Yeah, what is it?”

“Well, I was just thinking, what’s our story, for when we get to Velas, I mean?”

“We need a story? Why?”

“Well, I’m more likely than not being followed, and considering the fact that there’s really only a handful of Archivists in the city, I’ll be easily identified as one, so we need a, a cover story of sorts I suppose.”

Fero wrinkled his nose as he thought, and Lem felt his face mirror the expression. He’d been considering it for the past couple days, but he still hadn’t come up with any sort of suitable excuse for an orc Archivist and a random halfling to be traveling together through Velas. Any sort of “business” excuse would go out the window as soon as someone set eyes on Fero. Lem loved- liked- appreciated? his friend, but he _looked_ every inch over like he’d been living in a cave in the mountains in the woods for the last however many years he’d been there, and even if he bathed and changed his clothes, there would still be a _look_ about him that made Lem think of the wild animals they’d encountered on their way down the mountains. He could tell Fero was having similar problems with the way he moved off the path and took seat upon a long-fallen log and rested his chin on his fist, deep in thought. 

It wasn’t very long before Lem joined him, relieved to find that, though the log may be old, it was still structurally sound, and he didn’t sink into rotten wood as soon as he trusted his weight on it. They sat there together for a while, thinking, until Lem was startled out of his stupor by Fero leaning into his side, head nearly laying in his lap. Lem almost politely shoved him away, but instead, he found himself cautiously resting one hand on his head and, when that didn’t seem to cause any issues, he began methodically carding his fingers through Fero’s hair, removing twigs and leaves and other debris he found as he did so. 

“What if,” Fero said slowly after they’d sat in silence for a long while. “What if we were on our honeymoon or something corny like that.”

“Honeymoon?” Lem squeaked, pulling his hand away quickly.

\---

“Look, man, I’m happy and everything,” Hella held up both her hands, stopping Lem in the middle of his sentence, which earned her an extremely irritated look that she ignored. “But I don’t need to know all of this. What does any of this have to do with being blood-bonded?”

“Does the idea of me and Fero-” and he even said it like it was one word. Lemandfero, the distinctions blurred. “-bother you?”

Hella snorted, barely keeping a laugh from escaping. “ _No_. I just don’t see what this has to do with being anything of relevance.”

“Well, if you want to know, don’t keep interrupting.”

She began to open her mouth to argue that this was only the _first_ time she’d interrupted, but then she closed it, deciding that it wasn’t the hill she wanted to die on. Instead, she motioned at Lem to continue.

\---

Fero sat up, squinting at him with...was that suspicion? Disbelief? “Yeah! I mean what’s the big deal? People go all sorts of places when they get married. One of my sisters went to Velas when she got married the first time, I think, I’m pretty sure…” He trailed off, thinking back (or at least, that’s what Lem assumed he was doing, but one could never never really be too certain). Before Lem could try and shake Fero out of his reverie, he sat back up straight and looked at Lem. “Anyway, yeah, that would be a great cover because, like, really, how could _you_ be the orc everyone’s looking for if people assume _you_ were in, like, Rosemerrow getting married while the guy the Archivists are looking for was doing whatever _he_ did to get in trouble, right? Right?”

Although the idea was _daunting_ for reasons Lem didn’t want to even to begin to examine in the moment (one life crisis at a time, thank you very much), he had to admit it did have merit. It was even _sensible_ which wasn’t a word Lem would have ever considered using in the same sentence as Fero, but what more could he say? The little halfling often had a habit of surprising him just when he’d thought he had a grasp on who his friend was. “But, won’t it bother you? Having to pretend to be married to me?” Lem was grasping at straws, and they both knew it. Fero just shrugged and hopped up from his seat on the log.

“Nah not really. We’ve already been sharing like, food, space, and whatever else people think married people do when they’re not doing all the mushy stuff for the whole time we’ve been traveling. Won’t bother me.”

Briefly, the idea of doing “mushy stuff,” like kissing or holding hands, with Fero crossed his mind, and Lem felt his face begin to heat up. He was _sure_ that his face was turning a dark green, and really he just had to hope that Fero was polite enough not to mention it. There was one last thing weighing on his mind, though. “We don’t have any rings. Won’t that seem suspicious?”

The gave Fero pause, and he sat back down as he contemplated that particular problem. “Okay I might not remember this right, because really I just didn’t care, here was this old Rosemerrow tradition, I _think_ where, instead of rings, they just used to like, do this kind of scarring on the finger where the ring goes instead and-”

“‘ _Scarring_?’”

\---

“‘ _Scarring_?’” Hella echoed.

“Yes, scarring. I did some research into it later on, and it’s an old, old custom.” Lem held out his hand for her to see and, sure enough, across the base of his middle finger, right above the knuckle, was a pale scar. He had a few others across his hand, one that looked even like an _animal bite_ , but that was the one that caught her attention. Before she could ask any further questions, though, she heard the familiar clanking of heavy armor, and Hadrian laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey Hella, the captain wants to speak with you for a moment. Hello, Lem. Sorry, was I interrupting anything?”

“Hello Hadrian, no nothing important.”

Hella stood with a tired sigh, clapping Hadrian across the back with a force that would have made a smaller man stumble. “Thanks Hadrian, I’ll head over right now. Lem, uh, thanks for the story?”

He was already opening his book back up, only half paying attentions to his surroundings any longer. “Mmmhm of course. If you ever want to finish it, I’ll be around. Or Fero could, I suppose.”

\---

Over the months as the three of them traveled together, Hella kept collecting bits and pieces of the story, but they were so scattered and told differently depending on whether it was was Fero or Lem doing the telling that she hard time piecing it all together. In Velas for the Sun Day, Lem told her of when they were still in Fero’s cave, on the way back from Nacre, they were still in the woods according to Fero. The marriage was only ever brought up by Lem, the bite only ever by Fero, and while neither was ever around to counteract the other’s story, but they both had enough physical evidence to support the basics too. Or, at least, Lem’s hands did. But still, things weren’t adding up. And ordinarily it wouldn’t bother her, but now she was _invested_.

When they were stuck in Velas as the snow was cleared from the trails, she cornered them. 

“Drinks!” She announced, slamming down three mugs of hot goosenog on the table in front of them. 

“Oh hey! Thanks!” Fero drew his closer to himself, wrapping his hands around his with a smile. “Ohhhhh that feels food, it’s so _cold_ everywhere now. Why is Velas so bad at cold weather? Rosemerrow at least knows how to deal with it.”

“It’s a coastal city, it doesn’t usually get that cold here.” Lem nudged him with his elbow before reaching for his own drink. “I’m not surprised they’re not prepared for this type of weather. Even Rosemerrow would be scrambling during a blizzard.”

“Oh, like the Archives wouldn’t?”

“We were set back in the mountains, of course we wouldn’t! You know that, you were there!”

“Never _in_ the Archives!”

“No but you were basically in the same cave system as us!”

“Well yeah but-”

Hella was going to get a headache if they kept up their usual bickering. “Guys can we _please_ not. I just want to have a drink with my...fr...iends.”

“Of course.” “Sorry.”

“Look, I wanted to ask you two something.”

“Yes I _was_ born this devilishly terrible.” Fero snickered, ignoring the way Lem pointedly rolled his eyes. 

“Ugh, no.”

“Go ahead, Hella.” Lem motioned for her to continue. “What would you like to know?”

“Have you two been lying about the blood-bond this whole time?”

“No?” They both sounded incredibly confused, looking between each other and her. 

 

“Then why do you two keep dancing around the subject? Just tell me already.”

“Hella…”

“Look,” Fero leaned forward against the table, like he was bringing her into a big secret, “You really want to know?”

“ _Yes_ , that’s why I fucking _asked_.”

“Ferooooooo.”

“Lem broke my nose with one of his tusks trying to kiss me for the first time and that was after I bit him, and then we were blood bonded.”

Hella sat back in her chair, watching their faces as she took a deep drink from her mug. Lem wouldn’t meet her eyes, but Fero had the biggest shit-eating grin on his face. They both watched her carefully, hands gripped around their mugs, waiting for her response. Eventually, she emptied it, slamming it down against the table wit far more force than necessary. 

“You guys are full of it. Next time, tell a better story.”

As she walked away, she _knew_ she could hear them dissolving into laughter behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, comments and constructive criticism is always appreciated and i can be found at [theunacceptablepylades](https://theunacceptablepylades.tumblr.com/) on tumblr or [@thedaedpoets](https://twitter.com/thedaedpoets) on twitter


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